


Asking For Flowers

by LucyLovecraft



Series: Flowers & Tattoos [1]
Category: Ogniem i Mieczem | With Fire and Sword (1999), Trylogia | The Trilogy - Henryk Sienkiewicz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop & Tattoo Parlor, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Florists, Fluff and Humor, Jan Is So Hot For That, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash, Tattoos, Unrequited Lust, so much lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 04:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyLovecraft/pseuds/LucyLovecraft
Summary: Jan Skrzetuski has his shop. Jan Skrzetuski is definitely fine. Every day, he's doing fine. And on the days he isn't fine, he gets by. He has his shop, and that's enough.Or it was, until the tattoo parlour opened up next door.Jurko Bohun is not the subject of any of Jan's dreams. Jurko Bohun's parlour is definitely not sometimes involved in illegal activities. And even if it was, Jan wouldn't care.





	Asking For Flowers

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Asking For Flowers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200064) by [PlainAndSimpleNinja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlainAndSimpleNinja/pseuds/PlainAndSimpleNinja)



> As with so many of these Yuletide prompts, this is drawn from an AU that meadowlarkx/am_fae and I dreamed up. 
> 
> Title references ["Asking For Flowers"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=NNELkebgB9U) by Kathleen Edwards, who has a lot of Jan-esque songs.

_Don’t make this weird,_ Jan told himself sternly. _Come on, it’s just a friendly, neighbourly request. You could’ve asked Karl from the bakery, or Mrs. Nowak from the corner store. The tattoo shop just happens to be closer._

And the tattoo shop just happened to have the most goddam gorgeous man Jan had ever seen in his life as its proprietor.

_It’s not like you haven’t talked to handsome guys before. Hell, you’re the one who makes other guys nervous, Skrzetuksi. Bring that smile. You’ve got this._

But that had been before. That had been before the sound of a car backfiring a block away could send him to the brink of breakdown with cold sweat on his skin. That was before the smell of blood made him retch. That was all before. This was after.

 _This is starting over,_ he reminded himself. _Baby steps. Look how far you’ve come. You have the shop. You make people happy. You make things grow. You can do this._

He pushed open the door, making the hanging door bell ring.

“Just a minute!” A voice called from the back.

“Okay! No rush,” Jan said, grateful to have a moment to steel himself.

The walls were covered with framed examples of tattoo art in different styles: “tribal” stuff, vintage sailors’ tattoos, Celtic knots, Chinese characters, and all the other standard fare. Jan’s eyes skimmed over it without interest. Yet there were other designs: images with the violent, elegant vibrance of Daoist calligrapher’s brush. Jan stepped closer to one, the better to see the fine details. A black-haired woman in red looked back at him, beautiful and cruel, smiling as her horse reared. Her hair swirled around her, mingling with her horse’s mane. The red dress flowed over her body, the liquid currents of it echoed in the ribbon of text twining round her: “Small war, small glory”.

 _Huh,_ Jan thought with distaste. _“Napoleon Crossing the Alps”, but for assholes._

“That’s one of my own, if you’re curious,” a voice said.

Jan turned. The man before him had the effortlessly dishevelled bad boy look down to a fine art. A prayer of thanks was offered up to whoever had invented skinny jeans. And the rolled-up sleeves look. Also arm tattoos.

_Hallelujah. Amen. Goddam. Rest in peace, Jan Skrzetuski._

“Hi!” Jan said. “I’m from next door.”

“Yeah,” the most beautiful man alive said, nodding. “You’re the guy with the flower shop.”

“And you’re the guy with the tattoo parlour,” Jan said, flashing him his best smile. _Optimism and hormones will save the day._ At least he didn’t get tongue-tied the way Michał did. He put out his hand. “I’m Jan. Jan Skrzetuski.”

“Jurko Bohun.” The other man’s hand was warm, the grip strong. “So, you here for a grand opening discount on your first tat or something?”

Jan repressed a very vivid image of himself shirtless on the chair, feeling the sting of a needle and warm hands on his skin.

“Ah, not actually the reason I dropped by.”

“Oh? Is this the welcoming committee?” There was a slightly hostile edge to the question.

“Could be, but I would’ve thought Mrs. Nowak would be spearheading that effort.”

“Is she the one with the corner store?” Jurko frowned. “I went in yesterday and she looked at me like she expected me to hold up the shop _and_ ruin the neighbourhood all at the same time.”

“If you can pull it off, she’ll love you forever. It’d be the single most juicy gossip in the history of this entire neighbourhood, and she’d get to tell everyone about it. There’d probably be gift baskets.”

For a moment Jan wondered if he’d gone too far.

Then Jurko laughed.

“Shit, sounds like I should be kissing up to our local mafioso. Does she like flowers?”

“From a guy who looks like you? Definitely.”

_Oh God, Michał’s right: I have to curb that ‘flirt first, ask orientations later’  impulse._

“Anyway,” Jan said quickly, riding right over the moment before his words could sink in. “I have a favour to ask.”

“Yeah?” Jurko blinked.

“There’s a light out in the back room of my shop, and it turns out my own ladder is way too short to get anywhere near it. I know you just moved in, and so I was thinking you might have one to spare.”

_Jesus, I just walked myself right into a stereotype. “Hi, I’m the obvious gay next door who owns a goddam flower shop. If you’re not too busy being in a gang or something would you mind lending me basic repair tools that I, known homosexual with the aforementioned flower shop, am clearly too queer to own? Thanks ever so much.”_

“Oh,” Jurko said. “You need a hand?”

 

Which was how, a few minutes later, they were both crammed into the back room of Jan’s shop, the air heavy with the scent of lilies and roses.

 

“Thanks for helping me carry it in. I’ve got it from here,” Jan said.

Jurko eyed the ceiling.

“That’s pretty high. Here, hold the ladder and I’ll grab the bulb for you.”

“You really don’t have to do that. I’m taller than you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m thanking the welcoming committee. And this thing was at the back of my shop when I moved in. If the ladder breaks with you on it that Mrs. Nowak will probably accuse me of having murdered you. Just hold it while I get up there.”

And before Jan could argue Jurko was up the ladder, which did indeed creak alarmingly under his weight.

Jan glanced up, found himself at eye level with one of the better features of skinny jeans, and gave up any last thought of arguing.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “I, uh, appreciate it.”

“Any time,” Jurko said from somewhere above his head. “Hold on to the ladder, though. I think this’ll take two hands to get out. Your fixture’s mostly rust, and it looks like some of the wires have corroded through.”

“Jesus, don’t get electrocuted up there.”

“Nah, I’ll be fine. I used to hotwire cars when I was a teenager. Same principle.”

Without expanding upon that interesting revelation, Jurko reached up and began to unscrew the fixture. Jan opened his mouth to ask more, but other matters claimed his attention. Jurko’s shirt had lifted from his lower back, revealing dark ink scrawled across skin. Jan saw the claws of some bird of prey, picked out in a beautiful, brutal style that Jan recognised from the design he’d seen in the shop. A trailing banner scrolled downwards, apparently continuing a larger pattern, hugging the line of Jurko’s right hip before dipping from sight beneath his waistband. But, though clearly intended for text, the banner was blank.

“How big’s that tattoo?” Between asking why Jurko had been hotwiring cars, staring at his ass, and slightly invasive chitchat about tattoos, Jan opted for the latter.

“Whole back,” Jurko grunted.

“What is it? An eagle?”

“Falcon.”

“Is it finished? Looks like… looks like there should be words or something.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

It was an absurdly serious question to be asked by a vaguely criminal, supermodel-worthy tattoo artist three-quarters of the way up a stepladder in the back of a flower shop.

“Fate?” Jan repeated blankly.

“I did the design for it, but I had a friend help me with concept and actual execution. She told me I needed to leave it blank. Said I’d find something important enough to finish the piece one day, but that I’d have to wait for fate to bring the words to me.”

“Is your friend psychic or something?” Jan asked, trying to bring bring some modicum of levity or sanity back into the conversation. Ideally both.

He’d expected a chuckle at least, but the response was deadly serious: “Enough that when she tells me to do something, I do it.”

“Oh. That’s, uh, pretty wild.” _You are batshit crazy, probably have a criminal record, and God damn it if I haven’t always loved the dangerous ones. Do I believe in fate? Yes, simply on the grounds that it continues to torment me._

“You don’t believe me.” Jan found himself suddenly transfixed by a piercing, blue-green gaze.

How Jan would have responded would never be known, as fate chose that moment to strike again.

Three things happened in quick succession.

Something in the wiring sparked like a firework and Jurko flinched back. The rung upon which he stood gave way, and he plummeted downwards. And Jan, with a soldier’s hard-won instincts, caught Jurko in his arms and sank to his knees, shielding him with his body.

In the hard heartbeats that followed, Jan found himself staring Jurko full in the face.

The man could not have looked more startled if Jan had sprouted wings.

As if in a dream, Jan saw Jurko’s lips part. Adrenaline coursed through his blood like wine. His arms tightened around Jurko’s shoulders. Jurko’s eyes met his, and Jan felt his whole world narrow to a needle’s point moment of perfection. Eternities passed between each heartbeat. Jurko drew in an unsteady breath, and it seemed to draw Jan’s soul in with it.

“What the fuck was that?” Jurko asked.

Reality, bitch that it was, hit like an icy sidewalk.

“Sorry,” Jan said, quickly helping him up. “Shit, I’m sorry. I overreacted. Old instincts, I guess.”

Jurko’s brow furrowed.

“What the fuck do florists get up to that you need instincts like that?”

“Carnivorous plants?” Jan suggested weakly.

But the other man’s face had gone hard.

“Don’t fuck with me,” he said in a low, dangerous voice. “Are you a cop?”

“What? Oh, shit, no!” Jan spread his hands. “Ex military!”

“Bullshit. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You left the military and… what? You realised your passion was goddam tulips?”

This was too much. The adrenaline was still running in Jan’s veins, but what scant hopes he’d dared nurture had soured.

He stared at Jurko Bohun, and his heart ached to feel so alone.

“You ever heard of PTSD, asshole?” Jan snapped.

Jurko blanched.

“Oh. Fuck,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He at least looked like he meant it.

“Yeah, thanks. Therapist said I should do something where could make things, rather than break them, you know?” Jan told him, hating the strained note in his voice, especially because he couldn’t control it. And suddenly he was tired. Too tired for any of this. “So no, I’m not a cop. Just a florist who gets really, really shitty dreams.”

Jan turned from him and began to close the ladder.

“What’re you doing?” Jurko asked. “The light’s still broken.”

“If I can be honest with you, I’m kind of done with home repair right now.” Jan had never had much hope. Jurko Bohun was just another impossibility, like normalcy. This had been more of an exercise in futile optimism than anything else—going through the motions, with logic telling him it was pointless. But he had to try. Damn it, he had to try!

_I wonder what did more to wreck my nonexistent chances: being the queer with the begonias or being a shell-shocked basket case?_

“Do you… do you want a drink?”

Jan froze. When he glanced back at Jurko, the man’s shoulders were set in a stiff, awkward line. He shifted as he stood, but didn’t drop Jan’s gaze. 

“A drink?” Jan seemed doomed to repeat this man’s words back to him.

“Yeah. A buddy of mine makes his own, and gives me a few bottles now and then. Shit’s so strong your tastebuds give up the ghost after the first couple swallows.”

“Can I ask you something? In all seriousness?”

Jurko’s expression turned wary.

“Do you believe me when I say I’m not a cop?” Jan asked him.

“Sure I do,” Jurko said, pretty eyes wide and damnably innocent.

Jan considered his next words carefully: “So, if I say ‘yes’, I don’t have to worry that you’ll take me back to your shop and, I don’t know, tie me to a chair or something?”

The tattoo artist gave him a very strange look.

“No,” he said, in a not entirely convincing voice.

“If I disappear, Mrs. Nowak will know who to blame, you know that, right?”

Jurko snorted. “Yeah, if the cops were any good, I guess they’d put her on the payroll.”

Jan laughed.

“Okay, so can I assume this is some truly fucked-up bootleg liquor you’re offering me?” Jan asked, deciding he didn’t care about anything other than the fact that this man was smiling at him now, and that smile was the single most beautiful thing Jan had seen in ages.

The smile took on a dangerous little edge. God help him, but Jan had always been weak for danger.

“Can’t say anything they might use as evidence in court,” Jurko said.

“That’s good enough for me.”

 

* * *

 

The next day, Jurko Bohun stopped at the door of his tattoo parlour. A vase of flowers stood at his feet: red and yellow tulips, with a card nestled among the petals.

Opening the card, he read: “Thank you for the hangover.”

Grinning, he carefully cradled the vase close to his chest and carried the flowers inside.


End file.
